Family first

If one thing emerged crystal clear from the muddy first months of his father-in-law’s presidency, it’s that Jared Kushner prefers the background.

That’s where the camera found him in pretty much every official setting—among the flags and the rhododendron, stock still and strangely unchanged from one photo to another: spread collar, thin tie and dimpled, inscrutable smile. The senior adviser to the President was also the cipher of the White House—never heard in public, a blank page on which an anxious public could write its hopes. To moderates, he was the son of a prominent Democratic family, relied upon to be, with his wife Ivanka Trump, a calming voice of reason in the ear of a churlish, impetuous President. Donald Trump loyalists understood him as the most loyal of all, guided by the two words that both men repeat: “Family first.”

It’s a situation that might have survived had Kushner remained in the dog-eat-dog world of Manhattan real estate, where behind every empire builder with his name on a building lurks a discreet dealmaker and consigliere, scouring fine print, quietly finding opportunity and making problems disappear. But Washington is a town of rank and title, where secrets are hard to keep, official roles matter and the higher power of the Constitution looms. The quiet man is now conspicuous, having been slurped into the spotlight by the tentacles of a Russia investigation that produces headlines like Ford punches out trucks.

Just before Memorial Day weekend, news broke that Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, told the Kremlin last December that Kushner wanted to open a private communications channel with Moscow, perhaps even using Russia’s secret communications equipment to do it. The notion reportedly startled even Kislyak and bewildered the U.S. intelligence services that had intercepted his message. Kushner’s defenders acknowledged that the meeting took place but suggested that talk of a secret channel might be Russian disinformation. But once the story broke that investigators were actively looking into Kushner’s undisclosed contacts with Russians, the shadow of the FBI probe spread to the White House itself for the first time.

Since his inauguration, Trump has included Kushner and Ivanka Trump in meetings with the Pope, heads of state and business leaders, among others.

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